- When I was working through the agar sandwich experiment, so troubleshooting the setup, I started from the initial publication. They showed they had a way of doing the agar sandwich and I tried to copy that as closely as possible, and I ran into one big issue which was I had to use really big blocks of agar media and they would fall apart when I tried to move them from one plate to the next. 

So that was the most pressing issue that I had to troubleshoot first. I felt that the agar block was falling apart because it was too large, so I started using smaller pieces of agar that were easier to manipulate. In addition to that, I also tried to change the composition of the agar, so I increase the concentration of the gelling agent that was put into the media, to make the agar stiffer. 

So that solved the problem of the agar falling apart as I was moving it around. But, once I was able to get it out of the original plate and put it on top of the seedling, the next pressing issue that I ran in to, was that it would not stay in place. So, I would take this small block of agar and put it onto the seedling, and because the root has to grow vertically, I would stand the plate up, and then this block of agar would just fall off, because of gravity. That was something that I did not anticipate. 

And, I tend to utilize the tools that are immediately around me in the lab, so when the agar block wouldn't stay on the sandwich, I simply asked, how can I keep this thing in place? What do I have? What resources do I have available in the lab that will help me to solve this problem? So I had toothpicks that I tried to use, and tried to poke in through the agar, but the toothpick was really large, and that caused the media to fall apart. I also tried thumbtacks, but because they were made of metal, there was some kind of reaction that happened and the metal started corroding, so that was a problem. 

I figured, well, let me try to use Super Glue. So I tried to do a little bit of research on how Super Glue works, and sort of the chemistry behind the glue sort of forming a cohesive bond. So I looked up the active ingredient, and found that it was something called cyanoacrylate, which has some pretty interesting properties. It will bond in response to moisture, which there was a lot of in the agar. And, according to my reading, the bonding would happen pretty much instantaneously, so there would be relatively little possibility of the glue floating away into the media. So, by all measures, it looked like using Super Glue was a pretty good idea, and I tried it out, and it held the agar block in place pretty well. And that solved the problem, having the agar block fall off.